SEACAGE

Alex, the deposed young king of some unnamed land, wakes up to find himself blind and in agony: ""He was out in the sea, on a pinnacle of rock, and he was in the cage. Oh, my God.!"" Unable to remember why he has been punished so, Alex cries out for help; and in no time he is being miraculously released from his cage during a storm and guided by fish to the shore--where he wakes up to find himself now chained and held prisoner by a woman whose name is either Anita or Aletha (Truth). Alex and Anita copulate, quarrel at length, and the secret of the past is revealed: Alex was thought to have raped Anita (a case of droit du seigneur), and that's why he's been deposed, blinded, and exiled. Then Alex's vision is restored, Anita releases him, and he chains her. And so it goes--with some of the most (unintentionally) hilarious dialogue in recent fiction. Anita says: ""Alex, you don't think that I keep you here for a sexual toy--do you?"" Alex says: ""I do not talk to women who trap men with their bodies into saying things to them they should not."" And the chatty Voice of God, who plays Dr. Joyce Brothers to these two, says: ""Human relations are always hard. . . Love is not easy. . . And it goes beyond trust."" Adam and Eve? An existential battle of the sexes? A bad Italian movie? Burford (Alyx, Maclyon) calls it ""A Fable for Another Time in Three Voices""; not being in another time, we have to call it pretentious and embarrassing.